M.C. Haug (left) takes a close look at a home video surveillance camera at a security workshop in Oakland, Calif. on Saturday, June 30, 2012. Concerned with soaring a crime rate, Oakland Hills residents are looking at security cameras as an effective crime-prevention measure.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

M.C. Haug (left) takes a close look at a home video surveillance...

Image 2 of 5

Oakland police services technician Eddie Simlin speaks to a group of residents at a home video surveillance system workshop in Oakland, Calif. on Saturday, June 30, 2012. Concerned with soaring a crime rate, Oakland Hills residents are looking at security cameras as an effective crime-prevention measure.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Oakland police services technician Eddie Simlin speaks to a group...

Image 3 of 5

Alex Zaliauskas, demonstrates a home video surveillance system, devleoped by Logitech, at a home security workshop in Oakland, Calif. on Saturday, June 30, 2012. Concerned with soaring a crime rate, Oakland Hills residents are looking at security cameras as an effective crime-prevention measure.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Alex Zaliauskas, demonstrates a home video surveillance system,...

Image 4 of 5

Jesper Jurcenoks describes the video surveillance system he organized in his neighborhood to record vehicle license plates at a workshop in Oakland, Calif. on Saturday, June 30, 2012. Concerned with soaring a crime rate, Oakland Hills residents are looking at security cameras as an effective crime-prevention measure.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Jesper Jurcenoks describes the video surveillance system he...

Image 5 of 5

Oakland police services technician Eddie Simlin speaks to a group of residents at a home video surveillance system workshop in Oakland, Calif. on Saturday, June 30, 2012. Concerned with soaring a crime rate, Oakland Hills residents are looking at security cameras as an effective crime-prevention measure.

Growing concern about crime in the Oakland hills, and a withered Police Department's apparent inability to do anything about it, has given rise to a new neighborhood strategy embraced by both residents and police: Buy surveillance cameras.

Lots of them.

Since November, Oakland police have attended at least a dozen neighborhood meetings in Montclair and other hillside areas where they preach the benefits of wiring residential streets with security cameras, then make way for salesmen to pitch surveillance products to residents.

For police, residents' cameras are a new way to collect evidence at a time when depleted staffing levels have led to hours-long response times to burglaries. For residents, they offer new hope of catching criminals, even if they hint at a self-inflicted Big Brother state and threaten to change the tone of life in the hills.

"There's not enough police resources to protect you anymore," said Tony Morosini, who, along with his neighbors near Sibley Park, agreed to purchase cameras and point them at the street. "People are starting to take matters into their own hands."

Snapping car plates

At a workshop on video surveillance systems attended by police on Saturday, no one received more applause than Jesper "J.J." Jurcenoks, a self-described security activist whose cameras snap pictures of every license plate that enters his street near Redwood Regional Park.

"This is Neighborhood Watch 3.0," Jurcenoks told the standing-room-only crowd of 125 people at a church on Thornhill Drive. "You just don't want a picture of the criminal as he kicks down the door. You want the license plate as he leaves your neighborhood."

Last fall, after Montclair residents complained about a rash of break-ins and slow police response times, City Councilwoman Libby Schaaf's office organized the first video surveillance meeting and invited a few retailers to present their wares.

Salesman's dream

Since then, it's been a boom market for surveillance-camera sellers such as Logitech, an electronics company that makes camera systems that connect to a user's laptop. One Logitech salesman estimated he's sold hundreds of cameras to Oakland hills residents in recent months, sometimes at a discount for neighborhood-wide purchases.

"You dream of being able to sit in front of hundreds of target customers every couple of weeks," said Alex Zaliauskas, a senior global product manager at Logitech. "It's had a cascading effect. One meeting has spawned into nearly 20. And I don't know where 20 will grow into."

For all of the interest in high-definition screens and wide-lens camera angles, only a few residents raised privacy concerns.

Schaaf said residents' overriding worry was escalating crime. Violent crime in Oakland is up 20 percent from last year, even as crime rates in neighboring cities have dropped.

"Having eyes everywhere - a critical mass of cameras in our neighborhoods - could make a difference," Schaaf said. "This is one way citizens could help fill that gap while the city is rebuilding its Police Department."

Officer Eddie Simlin, a police services technician who spoke at Saturday's meeting, assured residents they were within the law if they avoided pointing the lens into a neighbor's house or car.

"Remember," Simlin said, "if they're out in public and on your street, there's no expectation of privacy."

Confined to hills

In an interview, Simlin said the demand for residential cameras in Oakland has been almost exclusive to the hills. He said he attended camera-sales sessions because the neighborhood associations involved invite him, and that the residents were the ones who invited salesmen.

Ultimately, residents at Saturday's session wanted to know if the cameras worked - if they captured usable images that led to prosecutions and deterred crime.

Simlin offered anecdotal evidence of video footage that led to arrests but was unaware of solid numbers.

"But I hear it all the time," Simlin said. "Once you get a good picture of someone committing a criminal act, they can't really say anything. You got 'em."

Morosini, who first installed cameras on his street three years ago, said neighbors had missed their best chance to catch a criminal in April.

One of Morosini's neighbors was walking his dog when two men approached, chased him into his home and shot him in the arm during a robbery attempt. A camera hidden on a mailbox should have recorded the men's faces, but it malfunctioned, Morosini said.

"So now we're in the process of upgrading our cameras," he said.

Cameras in bushes

Jurcenoks, whose neighborhood agreed to hide cameras in foliage along the street five months ago, said footage recorded of a hit-and-run accident had supplied an image of the car's license plate that led to an arrest.

Jurcenoks said his association had taken several steps to keep the $2,400 surveillance camera system, which snaps license plates day and night, from intruding on people's privacy.

Residents voted to give three people access to the license plate images. They agreed to release the plate numbers to police only if a resident had a criminal case number connected to a crime.

He added that his association had peppered the street with visible decoy cameras and posted large signs at the neighborhood's entrance that warn visitors they are under surveillance. He heard a few complaints the signs and cameras were altering the landscape of the once-bucolic neighborhood.

"You can either pretend there's no crime and people will move in and be terribly disappointed," Jurcenoks said, "or you can acknowledge the crime is there and send a signal that says, 'Here's a neighborhood that cares and does something about it.' "